The Horse Soldiers is a 1959 western film, set in the American Civil War, directed by John Ford, starring John Wayne, William Holden and Constance Towers. The film was based on Harold Sinclair's novel of the same name. The team of John Lee Mahin and Martin Rackin both wrote the screenplay and produced the movie.
The movie is based on the true story of Grierson's Raid and the climactic Battle of Newton's Station, led by Colonel Benjamin Grierson who, along with 1700 men, set out from northern Mississippi and rode several hundred miles behind enemy lines in April 1863 to cut the railroad between Newton's Station and Vicksburg, Mississippi. Grierson's raid was part of the Union campaign, culminating in the Battle of Vicksburg. The raid was as successful as it was daring, and remarkably bloodless. By attacking the Confederate-controlled railroad it upset the plans and troop deployments of Confederate General John C. Pemberton.
The Horse Soldiers was filmed on location in Louisiana and in and around Natchez, Mississippi. John Ford cut the film's climactic battle scene short when Fred Kennedy, a veteran stuntman and bit player, was killed in a horse fall. Ford was so upset he closed the set and had to film the rest of the scene later in the San Fernando Valley. The scene with the fatal fall remains in the film.
No director before or since John Ford has been able to capture the essence of what was the Great American West quite like the 'Godfather' of the Western Film Genre himself. He was a cinematographic pioneer; one of the best directors ever in terms of using the entire screen as his canvas. He is idolized by directors ranging from Orson Welles and Ingmar Bergman to Stephen Speilberg. Even Francis Ford Coppola borrowed from the Western master (Neri closing the door on Kay in the finale of I is an effect taken from the finale of Ford's "The Searchers (1956)", more on that film later.) Ford is pretty much the most decorated director in Hollywood history with four academy awards for best director.
The paradox exists in that many naturally associate him as either 'conservative' or 'Republican' because of his Western pictures and his long standing relationship with ardent Republican and black-listing supporter John Wayne, however; Ford's favorite presidents include Democrats Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy and Republican Abraham Lincoln, and Ford of course stood OPPOSED to fellow Hollywood directing icon Cecille B. DeMille who was in favor of fundamental McCarthyism and Hollywood blacklisting:
"My name's John Ford. I make Westerns. I don't think there's anyone in this room who knows more about what the American public wants than Cecil B. DeMille — and he certainly knows how to give it to them.... [looking at DeMille] But I don't like you, C.B. I don't like what you stand for and I don't like what you've been saying here tonight."
This film is certainly not in the league of Ford's great early masterpieces "The Grapes of Wrath (1939)" or, "Stage Coach (1939)"-two film that are shown from time to time on TCM-but this WAS to be Ford's epic Civil War epic - John Wayne leading the charge behind confederate lines into the deepest parts of the South that any Union soldier had yet been. But it was not to be, as the on-set death of one of Ford's staff members just completely took the life out of the production.
But with Ford, every film was meant to put the audience right in the saddle along with 'The Duke' and experience American history through vivid realisim, this film hooks the audience in the film's intro with a catchy tune that leaves no doubt for the viewer of the signifigance in the fight ahead, with 'Johhny Reb':
"I left my love, my love I left her sleepin' in her bed/I turned my back on my true love/Went fightin' Johnny Reb I left my love a letter in the holler of a tree/I told her she would find me in the U.S. Calvary Heigh-O, down they go there's no such word as can't/We'll ride clean down to Hell! And! Back!/For Ulysses Simpson Grant!"
